West African Cycle Challenge Coordinator
Street Child, West African Cycle Challenge, has invited the Sierra Leone National Cycling Association (SLNCA) to participate in their upcoming fundraising Cycle Challenge 2017 tour.
According to Roxanne Hargreaves, Street Child UK, West Africa Cycle Challenge Co-ordinator, “The event will see riders pedalling through Bo and Pujehun Districts. Eight Sierra Leonean riders will be joined by 11 cyclists from the U.K. to cycle from Bo through Potoru, Zimmi, Fairo, Sulima, and to the Liberian border crossing at Gendema.
The U.K. cyclists will continue from Gendema into Monrovia, where their tour will end. Street Child is hosting the event to raise funds for projects in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Each of the visiting riders will have to raise money for Street Child and pay for their tour. The costs to the U.K. riders includes: £750 travel package, £1,500 fundraising target, seven-day trip with four days cycling, covering a total distance of 300 kilometres.
Cyclists will begin their tour on Wednesday 31 May and end the Challenge on Friday 2 June 2017. The gruelling tour will take riders through several Chiefdoms. Ishaka Kamara, Head of Operations, South, from Street Child said they have talked to local chiefs in Potoru and Sulima and got permission for the crew and cyclists to stay the night in the villages. The cyclists will be greeted and welcomed by the Chiefs.
Hargreaves revealed the two-wheeled entourage will travel with a medic, a local mechanic and Street Child support staff. The support team will ensure the cyclists are safe, properly hydrated, fed and cared for.
Augustine Sesay, winner of the Presidential Cycling Race, held two-weeks ago, will be joining the pedalling pack across the south of the country.
Around 50% of the planned route is on tarmac but that still leaves half of the ride on hard-packed, mud roads, which have a tendency to ‘disappear’ in heavy rains. Hargreaves added, “Yes, it will be really, really tough, but the countries of Liberia and Sierra Leone are reward in themselves. This is a landscape like nothing the riders will have ever seen before – unlike anything they’ve ridden through. In terms of a unique challenge it doesn’t get more special than this.”
Hargreaves said this is the first event of its kind in Sierra Leone. “We’re happy to partner with the Cycling Association for this tour and in the future we hope to bring more cyclists on this route.”
The President of Cycling Association, Percy Nicholson, said, as an Association we will take an active part in the tour. Some of our women, men and veteran cyclists will join the U.K. visiting cyclists.
This first tour is just the beginning. A second cycling tour is being organized for January 2018.
Wednesday May 31, 2017.